After Words

As I wrote segments of this memoir and shared them with my men’s writing group, I was surprised to find how few of these writers, many of them in their sixties, knew about the places, things and events which are so rich in my own only slightly longer memories.

Victory versus Liberty Ships, types and identification of landing craft, names and locations of places in the western Pacific were as much in the news as our current coverage of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Israel. Everyone knew the implements and geography of war with the same familiarity we have today with Baghdad and Blackhawks. Maybe, I began to think, this piece has a purpose other than to give me exercise.

Thanks to the internet, strange things, places and events can be perused in substantial detail. The term “boondocks” for instance, which means “mountains” in Tagalog, is an Americanized term which came out of the Luzon Mountains near Mayon volcano a century ago when our soldiers were fighting the Philippine insurrectionists. Dutch New Guinea and Hollandia in my story are now Irian Jaya and Jayapura. Amoy and Fukien Province also have new names. The last Liberty Ships are in United States maritime museums. The ancient veterans are disappearing, leaving only their recorded voices, words and some pictures behind.

“More or Less at Sea” is more than a title. It describes where I lived for a long-ago year on the edges of the Far East.

-Al Jensen

July, 2003

Tucson, Tulsa and Santa Barbara